Book #97 of 2017: The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander A truly stunning work of scholarship, describing how the current U.S. program of mass incarceration – and the War on Drugs that feeds it – systematically oppresses people of color in similar ways to the Jim Crow …
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Movie Review: Arrival (2016)
Movie #4 of 2017: Arrival (2016) Honestly just a terrific movie all around. I had some minor gripes about the way linguists and linguistics are presented in the film, but it’s still probably the closest Hollywood’s ever gotten or that we could have reasonably hoped for. The script stuck pretty close to the beats of …
Book Review: Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America by Michael Eric Dyson
Book #96 of 2017: Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America by Michael Eric Dyson As a racially-conscious progressive, I was hoping Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America would be a powerful tract that I could quote from and recommend to others in the hope of opening their eyes to …
Book Review: Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
Book #95 of 2017: Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca is a Gone Girl for the early twentieth century, an exquisitely gothic tale of a young woman haunted by the legacy of her new husband’s late wife and of the secrets about her life and death that everyone at their manor home …
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TV Review: The Mindy Project, season 1
TV #15 of 2017: The Mindy Project, season 1 Honestly, I’m not a fan. Yes, there are laughs in every episode, but the plot and characterization are just so lazy and all over the place. Morgan is a cartoon character with no stable motivations, the show can’t decide on what sorts of stories it wants …
Book Review: Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach
Book #94 of 2017: Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach This book about dead human bodies – what happens to them biologically and what cultural practices have developed regarding their disposal – was educational but tough to read. It literally made my stomach churn, and I frequently had to put the …
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TV Review: Bosch, season 3
TV #14 of 2017: Bosch, season 3 Bosch is one of those weird middle-of-the-road crime shows where it’s nowhere near as popular (or as bad) as something like Law and Order, but it’s also nowhere near as critically-adored (or as good) as something like The Wire. A good comparison might be The Good Wife, I …
Book Review: Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
Book #93 of 2017: Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn Gillian Flynn’s first novel Sharp Objects is more plausible than Gone Girl or Dark Places, but it’s also a much more difficult read due to its themes of child abuse and self-harm. Flynn’s customary knack for flawed female characters is on full display here, from the …
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Book Review: A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness
Book #92 of 2017: A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness A powerful novel of grief and guilt, where a boy struggling to come to terms with his mother’s cancer must also face down the primeval creature that has crawled out of his dreams with harsh truths of its own. There’s a reading of this story …
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Book Review: Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
Book #91 of 2017: Bel Canto by Ann Patchett Individual passages of this book are gorgeously written, but the plot of a group of hostages gradually becoming friends (and in one case, lovers) with the gun-wielding terrorists keeping them prisoner made me supremely uncomfortable. It would be one thing if the story were intended as …
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